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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Bumping Or Dumping?
To bump, or not to bump, that is the question...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted February 04, 2010   Daytona Beach, FL
NASCAR will become more tolerant of the practice of bump drafting this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
What’s bumping? What’s thumping? What’s dumping?

NASCAR’s new approach to racing at two of its biggest tracks, Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, is sort of a work in progress. After NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton declared last month that drivers can “Have at it, boys,” everyone has been trying to figure out exactly what that means. The gate is open wider to more aggressive driving, obviously, but no one understands where the line will be drawn.

“How do I interpret it?” Brad Keselowski repeated a question. “It’s up for interpretation, that’s for sure. I really haven’t spent that much time trying to understand what they mean by it. Really, the only relevant part to me is how the other drivers react to it. I don’t plan on doing anything differently myself, but the only way to truly know how other drivers react is to wait and see.”

Keselowski said NASCAR should have an easier time enforcing the new scenario. Its previous ruling that drivers could bump-draft on some parts of the Daytona and Talladega tracks but not on others was confusing, at best, he said.

“It was harder before to draw the line,” he said. “It was no bumping here and maybe here, we’re not sure. That’s hard to enforce. That’s a pretty damn subjective rule. Now it will be easier on them, certainly if we’re seeing drivers go out and wreck each other every week.”

Juan Pablo Montoya said he doesn’t expect the new environment to spawn on-track mayhem. Drivers should be able to police themselves, he said.

“At Daytona, you simply can’t do the bumping going into the turns,” he said. “People realize that. You’ll spin the car in front of you out if you’re that close. People are smart enough to back out of it so that the person in front can gather their car and keep going.

“When it’s time to go, it’s time to go. But if you wreck somebody on purpose in the middle of the straight, I think you’re going to get parked. That’s putting somebody in danger.”

Montoya said he’s OK with an elevated level of competition, but he wants it to be “clean and aggressive. If you’re trying to wreck somebody on purpose, that’s stupid,” he said. “I think it’s fun if it’s hard racing. But one thing is hard racing. Another thing is stupidity.”

Jamie McMurray said NASCAR’s pre-race drivers meeting should clearly identify what’s acceptable and what’s not. Last year, officials started using television monitors in the drivers meeting to assist in explaining procedures, and McMurray said that has led to significant improvement.

“The best thing NASCAR has done in a long time is putting the monitors in,” he said. “They used to just discuss what was going on, but now they have a visual for everybody to see. I remember the pit road lights. They talked about how that was working for a year and a half, and I never knew what any of that meant – except I knew ‘red’ meant stop. When they put the monitors in there, I said, ‘I get it now.’ ”

The first competitive use of the new rules will be in Saturday’s Budweiser Shootout exhibition race. “That will tell us a lot,” McMurray said. “If you get penalized there, it’s not that big a deal.”


Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.


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